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Hybrids Make up 17.1% of Japan’s New Car Sales; Honda Has Highest Proportion

Posted by Stephen On Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

I’m not sure what happened here: The Asahi newspaper looked at these new car sales figures for Japan’s financial year April 2011 to March and came up a figure of 16% as the proportion that were hybrids. Now along comes the Nikkei (Japan’s equivalent of the WSJ or Financial Times), and their figure is 17.1%.

So who got it right?

Given that neither newspaper gives us the workings for their calculations, there’s no way I can check directly. What’s a humble blogger to do? Well, I’m going with reputation. And by reputation, it’s got to be the business daily — the Nikkei — that wins. So the proportion of hybrids as new car sales in Japan is actually 17.1%. A number that is 4.8% higher than the previous annual period.

The Nikkei is predicting that the proportion of hybrids will breach 20% for the 2012 to 2013 financial year period with the EcoCar government subsidy program and higher gas prices providing the impetus. Looking at March’s figure of 19.4%, this prediction looks eminently achievable.

The Nikkei also has some interesting stats about the different manufacturers. Here’s a little nugget that surprised me: Check this out — hybrids make up 40.8% of Honda’s regular car (non-kei car) sales, but only 36.1% of Toyota’s. Honda’s surprising numbers are attributed to the Fit — over 50% of Fit sales are hybrids.